Britney Spears’ ‘Till The World Ends’ Joins A Tradition Of Apocalyptic Videos

Posted 04/06/2011 1:03:34 pm
by Jocelyn Vena.

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Britney Spears dances away the apocalypse in her sweaty new video for “Till the World Ends.” She and her pals hang out in the sewers, flirting and grind as meteors falling from the sky. This doesn’t seem to bother Brit and her friends. They’ve made a pledge: They will dance until the world ends.

This is hardly the first time a pop star has fended off impending doom in a music video. In fact, as of late, it seems that apocalyptic videos are all the rage.

Alien Katy Perry landed a world that had seen better days in her just released “E.T.” video, where she discovers her lover, surrounded by the remnants of a once-great society.

Lady Gaga hinted at the end of one world as she built a new, more understanding species in her “Born This Way” video. And in a similarly positive way, Willow Smith brought a dead and buried civilization back to life in her “21st Century Girl” video.

Like Brit, Ke$ha also threw an end-of-days party in her clip for “We R Who We R.” And just to one-up his pop counterparts, Adam Lambert has gone apolocalypse-y twice: once in his “Time for Miracles” video (for the “2012” soundtrack) and again in his steam-punk inspired rave for “If I Had You” that appears to end in a nuclear explosion.

Rock acts have also been natural fits for this kind of doom and gloom. My Chemical Romance are warriors escaping apocalyptic troubles in the recent videos off their Danger Days album. And long before MCR went there, Soundgarden painted a dark vision of surburbia in their classic clip for “Black Hole Sun.”

Hip-hop has embraced these themes, as well. Just yesterday, the Game shot his latest music video for “Red Nation” in an end-of-the-world setting. Back in 1995, Tupac and Dr. Dre paid homage to “Mad Max” in the video for “California Love.”

But we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the happiest apocalypse song of them all, R.E.M.’s 1987 hit “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.” In the video a young skater kid and his dog riffle through 20th-century artifacts in a bombed-out farm house, far, far away from the city where Britney and her sexy dancers celebrate their last hours.